I find it easy in this day and age that the general tax-paying resident of this state would actually pay employees of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to set on their behinds and dream up things like this lawsuit.

If it was filed by an outside complainant, the reviewing employees involved and department heads should be dismissed. In this day and time our courts and taxes should not be wasted on such trivial things.

If the system is not clogged enough and money and time not wasted enough, we should maybe also file a complaint on a school called the Fighting Irish, or maybe we are irritating dogs with calling a school the Bulldogs.

Time to cut waste. This group is a start. Eliminate.

Jack Curtis

Addison

A history lesson

To the editor,

Unfortunately, it seems that there is currently little interest in our history by the electorate. How many people really understand the reason for the Second Amendment?

There are important happenings in history that have a cause and effect on our culture. Let’s start with the rise of the middle classes in England. I learned in elementary school about the battle of Agincourt where a relatively small force of leather-jacketed yeoman of England decimated a large army of armored knights in France. It was accomplished by yeoman or farmer soldiers armed with the assault weapon of the day, the long bow. It was the catalyst that weakened the absolute power of the nobles in England.

The power of the king had already been blunted by the Magna Carta (1215). If you want to learn more, look up the battles of Agincourt (1415) and Crecy (1346).

The rise of the free middle class in England was supported with the slow adaptation of important individual rights such as the right of habeas corpus. Because the nobles at the time needed the use of this relatively inexpensive militia rather than an expensive standing army to protect the country, the aristocratic ruling class slowly gave in to the growing demands of this spreading free class of yeoman and freeman.

In return for these freedoms each free citizen was required to own and periodically display their proficiency with the long bow and later with firearms. According to Winston Churchill in his book, “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,” these rights only survived during the civil war in England, the War of the Roses (1455-1485), because of the “Bills and Bows in the hands of the yeoman” at the time.

This is a simplified background for our Second Amendment rights. I was fortunate to have some very well-informed history teachers when I was growing up. They understood the importance of the Bill of Rights in building this great country.

Page 2 of 2 - The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was not just a whim but an important understanding between the American citizen and the American government based on thousands of years of history and hundreds of historic instances that influenced its creation.

The United States Constitution is not dead, nor is it a “living document,” but a brilliant guide to what a free people must do to stay that way.